RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/07/07/fireworks-show-lacked-safety-plan.html

During the 2012 Red, White & Boom celebration, there were dozens of police officers at the fireworks. Most of these officers were clumped in bunches near the Scioto River and simply watched the fireworks along with the hundreds of thousands of spectators. After the show ended and people started walking back to their cars, things turned violent. A gang of approximately 30 black youths (both male and female) started walking and running down Broad Street and randomly assaulted white people — old people, children, women.

I was first aware of the violence in front of the church at the corner of Third and Broad streets. One block east of there, a man crossed the street through the traffic holding his crying son. They clearly had been assaulted. When others asked if they were OK, he said, “No, we’re not OK; we got separated from my wife and daughter, and they’re still over there.”

Finally, two Columbus officers were seen slowly walking toward the scene of this violence. At this point, the black youths crossed the street to the opposite side of the officers and started randomly attacking more white people on the north side of Broad Street. I know; I was assaulted by five different youths.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jordanian-mp-pulls-a-gun-on-his-critic-during-live-tv-debate/
Jordanian MP pulls a gun on his critic during live TV debate
After trading insults with activist, parliamentarian first throws a shoe and then points a gun at adversary. Host tries to break up brawl. No shots fired

Jordanian member of parliament pulled a gun on a political activist during a furious debate live on Jordanian TV on Thursday.

The MP, named in a YouTube clip of the confrontation as Mohammed Shawabka, was debating a political activist named in the clip as Mansour Sayf al-Din Murad, discussing aspects of Jordanian politics including attitudes surrounding the uprising in Syria.

As the Jo Sat TV station discussion became more heated, each of the men accused the other of various crimes and deviancies. Shawabka claimed Murad was in the pay of the Syrian regime. Murad countered that Shawabka worked for the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency. “You’re a Mossad agent,” he said. “You’re a big crook,” came the response.

The MP stood up and began screaming and pointing at the activist, who was sitting opposite him, while the host of the program, Mohammed Habashneh, seated in the center, desperately urged his guests to “calm down.”

Instead, the MP sat back down, bent over and took off his right shoe, and threw it at the activist, who ducked behind his desk, knocking it over.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/07/massive-trayvon-martin-mural-is-going-up-in-east-new-york/

The city’s first known Trayvon Martin mural is going up on a wall of an East New York laundromat – adding to a brewing campaign to make sure history doesn’t snub the slain teen’s image.

Teenage boys will start painting the 100-foot picture July 16 on New Lots Laundromat’s wall underneath the elevated tracks of the IRT No. 3 train.

The East New York mural will join a growing list of similar street art popping up in black neighborhoods across the country.

“We want him to become a martyr, and it’s sad that we even have to say that,” said Catherine Green, executive director of ARTs East New York Inc., who is overseeing the project.

“We want to see change coming out of this. People see a young man with a hoodie and they think he is a criminal.”

The seven young painters will show off the outline for the giant image in mid-July but are set on drawing Martin dressed in the his famed sweatshirt.

“It goes back to hip-hop and how people dress. When you see that hoodie, it signifies what people think about our young men in our community,” Green said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/07/us-afghanistan-taliban-woman-idUSBRE8660C320120707 KABUL (Reuters) – A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital. In the three-minute video, a turban-clad […]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4251324,00.html
NYC: Ex-Muslim to be ordained as rabbi Dario Hunter, born to Iranian Muslim father and African-American mother to graduate online rabbinical program in the summer

On August 25 in New York City, environmental lawyer and former academic Dario Hunter will become the first Muslim-born man to be ordained as a rabbi. According to various reports in the NYC media, Hunter, an openly gay man raised by an Iranian Muslim father and an African-American mother, will graduate alongside classmates who include a Catholic-born Brazilian and a British songwriter.

But so far, none of the graduating class has ever met in person: They have all studied via an online program led by Rabbi Steven Blane of the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute (JSLI).A year ago Hunter left behind his academic career in the US and moved to Israel, where he decided to study toward rabbinical ordination.

One-third of the members of Hunter’s graduating class are converts to Judaism, and their diversity of backgrounds reflects Rabbi Blane’s belief in the need to train rabbis to serve the nearly 50% of Jews who are unaffiliated or in interfaith marriages.

Blane himself left his previous rabbinical position because he felt he needed to pursue a more progressive mission, and he resigned from the highly regarded Cantors Assembly in 2009 when he was threatened with expulsion for officiating at interfaith weddings.

He now trains rabbis and runs an online synagogue, Sim Shalom, which holds services for a global congregation every week.

Blane knows that a former Muslim becoming a rabbi will be uncomfortable for some, but the plurality of backgrounds of his graduating class fits perfectly with his belief in Jewish Universalism.

http://q4j-middle-east.com Professor William G. Moseley’s analysis in Al Jazeera of the new, would-be nation of Azawad is among the best out there so far…http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/20124149184982408.html. Having written about the quest for justice by the region’s various peoples for decades myself (http://q4j-middle-east.com), I have watched these new developments in North Africa very carefully. What has been of […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3151/national-jewish-democratic-council-adelson David Harris, the President of the National Jewish Democratic Council, has asked Jewish Democrats to sign a petition demanding that Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican Party stop taking campaign contributions from Sheldon Adelson, and return those already received. They claim his money is “tainted.” This absurd allegation comes from a highly […]